East Metro Calendar Of Events
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We encourage all volunteers (host families are very important volunteers) to participate in our area team meetings. This is our forum for planning and discussing the activities for the year and for future events.
Please join us at the East Metro Google Group for additional information, directions to meetings, and discussion: groups.google.com/group/east-metro-afs
East Metro Area Team meetings are scheduled on the following schedule dates:
December 9
January 6, 2009
February 10, 2009
March 10, 2009
April 7, 2009
May 12, 2009
Meetings are at 7pm and location varies. Interested in learning more about how you can make a difference and meet local volunteers? Contact andrewpiontek@earthlink.net for details of next meeting location.
Minutes from last meeting follw:
East Metro AFS Area Team Leader Meeting
October 23, 2008
Location: Hillsboro Office Building (Linda’s)
2345 Rice Street Roseville, MN
In Attendance:
Anne Mellesmoen, Tom Cushing, Julie Rivers Kuehn, Nancy Lohn, Linda Sax, and Amy Showers Stone
1. What are our strengths as an Area Team?
We like each other We have a variety of interests Flexibility range of ages knowledgable in our own area of functioning
2. What are our weaknesses?
Knowledge is not always shared sometimes because the others don’t care to know the info and sometimes because we recognize that we can’t be involved in everything burnoutget into rutssometimes impulsively reactive
3. What is the Role of each leader (coordinator) – and what more would they want to have help on or what would make their performance stronger?
Hosting – recruits, makes cold calls, follows up on leads, interviews families, keeps track of application completeness, contacts participating schools
He has some people helping to interview and recruiting families – more in the last year or so. Tom needs to know to whom he should send family leads so that the families will be sent the online application since office people have changed. He also needs for lead management to be up and functioning. He would like to see host families lined up and ready to go by spring, which means starting to recruit now for next year. We need to start calling families now for this winter and for next year.
Orientation - plans, organizes, recruits volunteers, executes part of the host family and all of the student orientations (except arrival) and completes the documentation of such.
Uses a lot of volunteers during the orientations. Wants parents to read and understand the emails. Julie would like to have NOTHING to do with the host family orientations pre or post arrival, not even the contact and documentation. Nancy L and Anne like working with the parents.
Support / Liaisons (Deb / Anne) - recruits new or reassigns experienced liaisons near where the students are placed except when a chapter assigns their own. Assures the training of all liaisons. Contacts liaisons who are not documenting contacts regularly to offer help and encourage compliance. Support handles issues that the liaisons and families/students need help with.
Appreciates all leads and help finding new liaisons and looks forward to more active chapters to assume that role. Wants to develop trained trainers in different sections of the area to work one on one with the new liaisons who can’t get to group orientations.
Sponsored Programs – Bob Boyce wants help in planning an event, events, or advertising to promote hosting of Sponsored Program students. There is money available for that until the end of the year. Nancy and Julie will get together with Bob to plan something.
Sending – Amy follows up on leads, answers questions, ensures that candidates are interviewed, helps students with the paperwork.
Recruitment efforts – such as school visits and info nights may be useful, but Amy does not want to do them. The office and other volunteers will be doing these. Suggested and approved: Use some money for ads in school newspapers. Julie will ask Andrew to write up something and to approach school newspapers. Anne will send email address for Cannon Falls.
Volunteer Development – Contacts volunteer leads, determines area of interest, helps through registration process and forwards new volunteer info to area team leaders so that the person can be put to work. Works on public relations through website, church bulletins, craigslist and others.
Can use help letting people know of volunteer needs, AND getting new volunteers active in something right away to build a relationship with them and so that they don’t lose interest.
4. Role of AT – Not that different from what it has been, except that perhaps chapter development will take some dollars from the area, but will take care of some of the volunteer jobs at a local level.
Area Team would still do large student orientations, work with volunteers, families, and students who are not in a chapter.
Proposed months to meet and purpose of those meetings, as well as who would attend:
August – AT and Chapter leaders – find out how arrivals went, what needs there might be for the year
September – AT and Chapter leaders – discuss post arrival orientation, get new sending catalogs
November – AT and Chapter leaders - Winter arrival and plans for Christmas party and the January group meetings.
January – all volunteers who are working under specific coordinators – introduce area team chairperson, share the “state of the area,” promote family and AA recruitment, meet with own work group to strategize, plan, make assignments, encourage, give information, train – whatever the group most needs.
March - AT and Chapter leaders - no set agenda
April – AT and Chapter leaders – plan end of year and end of stay orientations, talk about hosting progress
June – everyone for summer get-together, awards, good-byes, thank yous, and large audience for last minute host family recruitment help
LEADERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO PULL TOGETHER THEIR OWN MEETINGS WITH THE VOLUNTEERS THAT HELP THEM WHENEVER SUCH MEETINGS ARE NEEDED – for strategizing, planning, brainstorming, etc.
5. Election – Who is interested in running?
Chair - Nancy Lohn and Nina Leiser are running. Anne or her husband will make the information about each of them more uniform so that it can be sent to all volunteers. According to the silly phase-in plan this may be a four year stint, but new information may have changed that.
Chair Elect – We discussed that perhaps for the first two years the Chair Elect could be the person who is not elected chair if this is okay with both of the people who are running, especially since they each have times when they are out of town and may need to have the other step in as Chair. We would then have a vote for Chair Elect at the end of two years, and that person would become the Chair in year 5. Treasurer - Linda Sax and a blank line are running,
All registered volunteers who were registered as of October 11 will be eligible to vote. If was decided by a vote of 5 to 1 that this should be a vote in person. Eligible volunteers will be notified of the vote and the candidates . The date is November 11, the site will be the Hillsboro Office building 2345 Rice Street Roseville, Minnesota and will take place between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm. The AT leaders and chapter leaders will also meet that evening to plan the January meeting.
It was discussed that we should recruit a leader to head up the social events
Also discussed – Why some of us are unable to log on to afsonline and whom to call to resolve that.
Scrapbooking is on Nov. 8 – the first session was packed
Janak’s current temporary host family is getting along fine with him, but transportation is an issue. Tom has a lead from the Indian Community in Eagan, and since Roseville and Eagan are both on trimesters Julie will follow up with a call to the school to see if they will accept Janak and Tom will check with the family to see if they are still willing to host Janak. The first trimester ends in the end of November.
November 20 Bob is meeting the Sponsored students to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children
Julie brought a letter from her son’s school asking for volunteers for their “Festival of Nations”. It sounded like a perfect opportunity for the sponsored students to do presentations. I was serving pie, so I don’t know where that discussion went.
General Information and Discussion:
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New staff contacts – Over all contact (in place of the regional managers) Mary Jo Brock. Hosting – Nancy Weis Sanfo and Betsy Passe. Sending – Amanda Fischer and Brittany Shrimpton
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Copy of Regional Council Powerpoint Presentation for each member
Email Protocol – WE should email the one person whom we think can clarify things for us, rather than reacting impulsively
AFS Picnic
School Dances
